2012-09-01
Explanation
This comic satirizes the dark logic of healthcare cost reduction. In the first panel, two government officials discuss ballooning healthcare costs. One suggests banning smoking to save money. An advisor then points out an uncomfortable truth: "Actually, smokers tend to cost less over time, since they... die sooner." The president responds with a contemplative "I see..." The final panel shows a newspaper headline: "President Starts '''Smokes '''N Bacon''' Program" with a quote from the Surgeon General: "Smoking is only dangerous to wusses."
The humor is based on a real and well-documented paradox in health economics: while smoking causes expensive diseases, smokers on average die younger and therefore consume fewer total healthcare resources over their lifetimes than non-smokers who live long enough to develop costly age-related conditions. The comic takes this counterintuitive finding to its absurd logical conclusion -- if the goal is purely to minimize healthcare costs, the government would actually encourage unhealthy behavior to reduce lifespan and thus total expenditure.
The votey panel pushes the dark logic even further: an advisor says, "Actually, if we can get population negative, health care would be profitable." This extends the satirical reasoning to its most extreme conclusion -- if you reduce the population below zero (an impossibility played for laughs), healthcare spending would somehow become a net profit. It highlights how purely economic reasoning about healthcare, divorced from ethical considerations about human welfare, leads to monstrous conclusions.